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Demo of Cemaphore's Google/Outlook live sync

Last week I talked about how Cemaphore is helping out Google by providing a new live sync technology between Microsoft Outlook and Google’s Gmail and Calendar. This rocks and I want it in the worst way, since I’m moving my life over to Gmail and Google Calendar.
Here’s a first look with the CEO, Tyrone Pike. I have a longer interview with Tyrone too, where we learn more about Cemaphore’s business.

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Robert Scoble

As Startup Liaison for Rackspace, the Open Cloud Computing Company, Scoble travels the world looking for what's happening on the bleeding edge of technology for Rackspace's startup program. He's interviewed thousands of executives and technology innovators and reports what he learns in books ("The Age of Context," a book coauthored with Forbes author Shel Israel, has been released at http://amzn.to/AgeOfContext ), YouTube, and many social media sites where he's followed by millions of people. Best place to watch me is on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/RobertScoble
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“With Oultook 2007 you can subscribe to internet calendar the same way you do with iCal for example.”

You should check out the demo of Cemaphore’s product. It does a little bit more than what you’re talking about. It’s true that in outlook 2007 you can subscribe to an iCal (don’t get me wrong, I am thrilled MicroSoft put in support for a standard like iCal) however it puts all that stuff as a seperate calendar not on the same calendar as your exchange calendar. And this only gives you one calendar per tab. If you have 3 or 4 calendars on your google account (shared or whatever) then you are going to have just as many separate calendars in outlook and they won’t correlate easily (at least I haven’t been able to see how to do it).

Another problem with it is (in my limited experience trying to use my google calendar in outlook 2007) the sync run is really slow. If something gets added to google then it takes quite a while for it to show up in outlook. This is a problem if you are looking at a shared calendar and have people updating appointments regularly.

This, however, is all trivial compared to the last problem with subscribing to iCal in 2007. Any calendar opened is _read only_. This really isn’t a whole lot of use for anyone who uses their calendar at all. You can see appointments but you can’t move, modify, delete or add any? To do that you have to go out to another app (your web browser) to do anything useful? Defeats the point of having the calendar show up in outlook (especially since, once again, that read only calendar is no correlated to your exchange calendar).

If you look at the Cemaphore demo you’ll see that it gets all your calendars from google, maps them to different categories in outlook and puts them all on one calendar so you can see where you have conflicts and what’s going on. On top of that it keeps the exchange and google calendars in sync in real time and allows you to modify any calendar or event however you like. This is much different than just subscribing to an iCal, and is pretty cool for anyone who wants to use their google calendar in outlook with or without exchange.

Once again it is nice that Outlook finally supports the iCal spec, but it’s really nowhere near as interesting as what’s going on in this demo.

“With Oultook 2007 you can subscribe to internet calendar the same way you do with iCal for example.”

You should check out the demo of Cemaphore’s product. It does a little bit more than what you’re talking about. It’s true that in outlook 2007 you can subscribe to an iCal (don’t get me wrong, I am thrilled MicroSoft put in support for a standard like iCal) however it puts all that stuff as a seperate calendar not on the same calendar as your exchange calendar. And this only gives you one calendar per tab. If you have 3 or 4 calendars on your google account (shared or whatever) then you are going to have just as many separate calendars in outlook and they won’t correlate easily (at least I haven’t been able to see how to do it).

Another problem with it is (in my limited experience trying to use my google calendar in outlook 2007) the sync run is really slow. If something gets added to google then it takes quite a while for it to show up in outlook. This is a problem if you are looking at a shared calendar and have people updating appointments regularly.

This, however, is all trivial compared to the last problem with subscribing to iCal in 2007. Any calendar opened is _read only_. This really isn’t a whole lot of use for anyone who uses their calendar at all. You can see appointments but you can’t move, modify, delete or add any? To do that you have to go out to another app (your web browser) to do anything useful? Defeats the point of having the calendar show up in outlook (especially since, once again, that read only calendar is no correlated to your exchange calendar).

If you look at the Cemaphore demo you’ll see that it gets all your calendars from google, maps them to different categories in outlook and puts them all on one calendar so you can see where you have conflicts and what’s going on. On top of that it keeps the exchange and google calendars in sync in real time and allows you to modify any calendar or event however you like. This is much different than just subscribing to an iCal, and is pretty cool for anyone who wants to use their google calendar in outlook with or without exchange.

Once again it is nice that Outlook finally supports the iCal spec, but it’s really nowhere near as interesting as what’s going on in this demo.

As a follow up, i just messed around with outlook a bit after writing that response and they do have a “view in overlay mode” which lets you see your iCal calendar on top of your exchange calendar. This at least lets you see where you have conflicts. I still believe all my other points are still valid however.

As a follow up, i just messed around with outlook a bit after writing that response and they do have a “view in overlay mode” which lets you see your iCal calendar on top of your exchange calendar. This at least lets you see where you have conflicts. I still believe all my other points are still valid however.